Our trip to NZ was excellent, a bucket list journey. Was really impressed with the Trips/Tramps day trip to Milford, Andrew was a fabulous guide. Hard to mess up a place as beautiful as Fiordland. Car and accommodations were all to expectations. No surprises is always a good way to have a vacation.
First night accommodation at Queenstown was average but the rest of the trip was very enjoyable. Thank you.
Highly recommend!! Our tour was fantastic and an excellent value for the price. Marie was very helpful in helping us add on an additional stop on our self-driving tour, and gave us suggestions on when to leave to get to where we needed to be on time. She was also helpful in allowing us to book the rental car for a few days longer as our flight out was not actually at the end of our tour. The hotels were excellent and breakfasts at each place were wonderful (especially Princes Gate in Rotorua!). We ended up needing to rearrange a few things as we spent way to much time in one place to go to the third activity that day. It was very simple to call each place and rearrange our bookings a bit so everything worked out well. There was a small snafu getting the tour package from the rental car company but the company was very helpful and overnighted it to us in Rotorua and we had no issues along the way not having it. Driving through the North Island was a dream and much simpler than expected. Already thinking about when we can go back and what lovely trip Relaxing Journeys can help us with! Many thank yous!
I found the 5-day north island tour very good. Although alot was packed in, I got a very good overview of the best bits and I will definitely be back to see more. The activities you can do are excellent. I found the Maori Cultural evening excellent and a must for any traveller. Mani was very helpful and even added on my trip to Hobbiton with a couple days notice. I would highly recommend this self-drive tour as you see alot of the fantastic scenery and the option of Kruse GPS was helpful as gave good local history to areas you drive through. Thank you for all your work into making my trip such a fantastic one that has left me wanting to return and discover more that New Zealand has to offer.
The country is sensational!! Accommodation was basic; however, very clean. The best presented unit was in Wanaka Distinction alpine resourt where we had access to pool, spa, barbecue and many other complimentary things for comfort including dishwasher, washing machine. The weather was hot +28 and we would appreciate if units have air-conditioning inside but none of them had. The worst experience was with car hire through Thrifty cars. They’ve given us a heavily damaged car! We were told the car was damaged but driveable and they have already photographed all damages. I asked to see the photographs before signing in the car, the guy said he didn’t have them!!! How can you rent the car without inspecting a damage??? So I refused, I said that we would like to take our pictures before renting this car so the guy took us to the car which was like 5 minutes of walking in heat conditions. Guess what we counted 7 damages and deep grazes on car which weren’t even showed on their drawing!!!! So we took all pictures and the guy witnessed everything (he wasn’t happy you could tell)! We documented on their lease form and marked additional damages on their drawing. Having mentioned all this the provided GPS unit didn’t work neither so we had to use off line maps for most of our trip. I will never book with Thrifty cars again! As for Relaxing Journeys, the company is very good and helpful.
Excellent and easy to follow details for the trip. Felt like we were really on vacation because we just had to do what the instructions told us to do. No issues at any of the stops with any of the reservations or vouchers etc. Vehicle worked out well. Had to remind Thrifty about the picking up the package. LOVED the Kruse GPS. (Sending them a separate email) There was one issue with the address for Hobbiton and the GPS. The address doesn’t actually come up in Matamata; I think it is Hineura. Had to get instructions from the iSite in Matamata. Not a big issue! I would (and did already!) highly recommend your services. Thank you and special thanks to Marie for her help.
Mani was very accommodating and responsive to deal with! and so was Sally! Wish we had more time in NZ! It was a good balance between pre-planned activities and self planning and free time. Thankfully Mani knew what activities to book for us before we even knew! Loved, loved the Princes Gate Hotel, and the variety of all hotels booked. If anything could be improved, I supposed perhaps defining the hotels that we could choose from would be great, i.e. heritage vs modern. Would definitely use Relaxing Journeys again. Mani did the “heavy lifting” that I would normally have done on my own, made it a great vacation. Thanks Mani!
Great holiday. We had a ball. The Kruze GPS was brilliant! It made driving so much more enjoyable. The only constructive criticism I would offer is that the ‘story’ does not stop running when navigation instructions are being given – it keeps playing, unheard, in the background. This means that you miss the bits.
My husband and I had an amazing time in New Zealand after booking our honeymoon through Relaxing Journeys. Our travel consultant Toni made everything easy with constant emails letting us know what we had to do and providing useful information about NZ. The only thing I would recommend is to get the GPS with your hire car. We didn’t have it and it made things a bit difficult for our first trip to NZ 🙂
We had an amazing time in NZ and definitely plan to return. There were a couple of points that could improve the overall experience but these are suggestions, not complaints. The first trip was to Waitomo Caves. We had from 9am to 1.15 to do the journey which meant we were there far too early. We asked the assistant at the Long Black exactly where to meet the guide and she was adamant that we had to go down to the glow worm caves to get passes. Luckily the girl at the caves was far more helpful and emailed the guide to let her know where we were. Actually, starting from the glow worm caves was better as we didn’t have to move our car after the first visit.
We would recommend starting there rather than at the Long Black. Also. We were booked for 1.30pm which meant we didn’t finish the tours until 4.30pm so had to travel most of the way to Rotorua in the dark. The Holiday Inn was the best place to stay! Due to it backing on to the thermal valley awesome! On the final day our trip to Hobbiton was nearly ruined as the sat nav didn’t have a signal going over the plateau so we followed the address in our itinerary. Unfortunately Hobbiton is nowhere near Matamata and we had to travel back almost the way we had come and go out from Hinuera. Luckily the lady is the tourist office is so used to travelers on the trilogy tour being given the wrong directions she had a slip of paper ready printed to hand to us. We arrived at Matamata at 10.45 as instructed but it is a 20 min drive to Hobbiton. Not a relaxing journey! Everything else was fabulous and these are only tweaks. Oh. And we loved The Heritage! Hope to travel with you again soon.
Our trip was amazing and lovely. The sunny weather provided excellent conditions for photo shooting of the beautiful landscape. Especially the evening photos I took in Queenstown and in Paradise, Otago. I also had the opportunity to meet with John Crump, an impressionism artist near Glenorchy, and collect one of his oil paintings!
We had a good time. Not your problem that it was raining the last 2 days and we had no wet weather gear. Also the cruise did not go to the hole in the rock because the sea was too rough, but the crew were very good and we saw dolphins, so it was quite exciting. The car we got from Thrifty was an upgrade. Nice, but not so nice was the fact that there was no GPS available till 12pm. and we had arranged to pick up the car at 9am. Still the service lady was very apologetic and gave us maps and also a discount on the insurance excess cost which to some extent made up for the annoyance.